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and as for whether Rockefeller matters, JESUS H CHRIST are you a rube.

do you know diddly about the history of anti-trust laws and regulations? that was the point.

your nonsensical straw man about overly taxing the elderly just shows how completely bent and lacking in vision you are. we have senior citizen exemptions for property taxes and all kinds of expenses, OBVIOUSLY someone who met a certain threshold could have their retirement returns taxed at a different rate.

and of course, the difference would be the people you are describing actually worked for the money in those retirement accounts, they didn't inherit it.

do you know why we have an estate tax in the first place? simple question.

Funny too that one of the areas of focus for the big bad Rockefeller Foundation is the same folks that are on the short end of the dysfunctional economy: Protecting American Workers

If you believe the proper role of taxes is confiscatory wealth redistribution then I guess you have no problem with the fact the top 1% of earners are ALREADY paying a whooping 40% of all personal incoe taxes and even going down to folks with pretty modest AGI of around $33K accounts for over 97% of all personal taxes paid -- National Taxpayers Union - Who Pays Income Taxes?

According to official House of Representatives background the estate tax was first used to finance the US Navy to ward off aggression from France, knowing the military prowess of the cheese eating surrender monkeys it should come as no surpass that tax did not last but five years -- The Economics of the Estate Tax (http://goo.gl/EB84Q - broken link)
The modern estate tax has been with us since 1976 and has several flaws. The most troubling aspect of estate taxes is that any person that wishes to avoid having an estate to be taxed can simply choose to consume their wealth instead of saving / investing it. Maybe such behavior could be justified if there was some true benefit to such tax schemes, but as the report notes, data from the respected economist, Alan Blinder, shows both through historical research and simulation, that there is no data to support such assumptions -- JSTOR: An Error Occurred Setting Your User Cookie

Questions:
Is it true teachers get 75% of salary as pension?
Is it true that a worker making same $ as that teacher gets far less from social security?
Is it fair for those who have saved, yet are not millionaires, to have their savings taxed?
Looking for info before sharing thoughts.
Thanks.

I think it pretty clear that posters like edsg25 are overly concerned with the emotional nonsense doublespeak that politicians in Illinois have mastered -- "what about the CHILDREN, the DOWNTRODDEN, the DISADVANTAGED" while these same politicians act in their own self-interest which ends up shortchanging the very groups that the platitudes are designed to appease.

The only defense there is against this irrational behavior is to look at the data and the data very much shows that job losses in Illinois are contrasted with increased employment in states that do not have the culture of corruption and that have rational means of meeting their budgetary obligations.

While lunatics prattle on about some sinister forces being responsible for the sorry mess that Illinois finds itself facing after decades of make-believe budgeting, sane voters in other states affirm their leaders' decisions to make real progress on breaking the corrosive ability of illegitimate collusion that result in unsustainably generous "bargaining".

I believe the sort of effort that was successful in Wisconsin is desperately needed in Illinois. The lack of separation between "law making" and "governing" is exactly what Hayek found as a growing cancer in systems of 'representative' democracy a mere three or four decades ago. To quote directly:
Quote:
We should want an assembly not concerned with the particular needs of particular groups but rather with the general permanent principles on which the activities of the community were to be ordered. Its members and its resolutions should represent not specific groups and their particular desires but the prevailing opinion on what kind of conduct was just and what kind was not.
Economic Freedom and Representative Government | Institute of Economic Affairs

I ask you: is it just for school boards and the state legislature to approve pensions that they do not fund?

The illegitimate demands of "collective labor" are the clearest example of "specific groups and their particular desires" distorting the role of the legislature.

I would hope that efforts to "clean-up" abuses of government that are well documented would be the concern of more citizens instead of the foolhardy belief in lunatic "conspiracy theories" that exist only in the fevered imaginations of the overly emotional.
Campaigns based on juvenile insults of one's opponent and vague promises of unrealistic "something for nothing" have gotten Illinois into the crisis that we currently face and the way out is not to vilify any one group. The parallels between scapegoating of the successful and other ugly periods in history ought not need to be pointed out...

The very premise that "forces beyond the control" of law makers in Chicago / Illinois belie the FACTS that other states are creating more jobs, are attracting more business, have net positive migration and overall are on a trajectory to overtake Illinois in many ways.

Deniers will only hasten the spread of the ruin that will be inevitable without drastic changes in the way that Illinois budgets for the government supported workforce / retirees.

I laugh at the ad hominem attacks leveled against me. My motivations to responding to this thread are simple -- to poke holes in the patently false supposition that "it ain't the fault" of law makers in Chicago and Illinois that years of fake budgets have left the state on the precipice of doom. I further find it hilarious but completely understandable that fools that continue to re-elect the charlatans who "weep all the requisite tears needed of "feeling" politicians" would swallow, hook, line and sinker, the fairy tale that "but for those mean ol' rich people" everything would be rosy in Illinois (or the nation). Such irrationality is of course how crooks caught red handed shaking down marks for "campaign contributions" still have the affection of large percentages of voters.

The simple reason that anyone that lives in Illinois ought to be a heckuva lot more concerned with budgetary hijinks in Springfield than which White House resident "lied" 8+ years ago is that the corruption in Illinois has so isolated elected official from any efforts to unseat them that they quite literally will be able to raise taxes without limit until they die. On the national scene there does at least seem to be some ability to at least elect folks that profess some desire to change course...[/url]

ROFLOL. This is hysterical, chet. If I had scripted what your reply would have been to my last post, this is how it would have come out word for word.

Funny too that one of the areas of focus for the big bad Rockefeller Foundation is the same folks that are on the short end of the dysfunctional economy: Protecting American Workers

If you believe the proper role of taxes is confiscatory wealth redistribution then I guess you have no problem with the fact the top 1% of earners are ALREADY paying a whooping 40% of all personal incoe taxes and even going down to folks with pretty modest AGI of around $33K accounts for over 97% of all personal taxes paid -- National Taxpayers Union - Who Pays Income Taxes?

According to official House of Representatives background the estate tax was first used to finance the US Navy to ward off aggression from France, knowing the military prowess of the cheese eating surrender monkeys it should come as no surpass that tax did not last but five years -- The Economics of the Estate Tax (http://goo.gl/EB84Q - broken link)
The modern estate tax has been with us since 1976 and has several flaws. The most troubling aspect of estate taxes is that any person that wishes to avoid having an estate to be taxed can simply choose to consume their wealth instead of saving / investing it. Maybe such behavior could be justified if there was some true benefit to such tax schemes, but as the report notes, data from the respected economist, Alan Blinder, shows both through historical research and simulation, that there is no data to support such assumptions -- JSTOR: An Error Occurred Setting Your User Cookie

What you are is unable to answer a straight question, you've had 3 chances, and won't do so.

Of course Rockefeller, like every other ruthless capitalist baron, donated money around, he had so much he didn't even know what to do with it.

I could argue that it's only until fairly recently that UC hasn't been a giant bastion of wealth and privilege, and of course UC's demented legacy of the "Chicago School" of economics has been used time and time again to promote and defend ridiculous economic policy. So, no, I do not accept your argument one wit. You do know how much tuition is there, right? It's not a public college, it's private.

Perhaps you'd now like to argue that society benefited so much from the establishment of Brown (the Ivy League school) that the fact the wealth used to create it came from slavery is irrelevant.

Honestly, I could take the time to break down the nuances in your links, but you clearly are too biased to comprehend anything that doesn't agree with your limited (and oddly self-punishing given you clearly aren't anywhere near the top 1% in wealth) worldview.

So I'll repeat - answer the simple questions.

I'm giving up on wasting my time with you, as you seem hellbent on ignoring the fact that people interested in a more just society & sharing of resources (it all boils down to natural resources) are also for cracking down on political corruption. I have a good friend who audits the state of Illinois, and the budget shenanigans go back decades, and are bi-partisan, and have nothing to do with an IDOT worker or public school teacher or any other rank and file state employee. It's not "A or B," and the fact you continue to miss that point would be funny if it wasn't so tragic.

You and I have different interests and we approach this topic differently. I don't know whether you'd admit it or not, but from my perspective I have to say that you know things that I don't know and that I know things you don't know. I'd still feel that way even if you disagreed and thought I knew nothing.

So let's set some things straight:

1. yes, i'm in full agreement that Chicago (among cities) and Illinois (among states) have rightfully earned reputations for corruption and bad government.

2. and, yes, all things being equal, this counts. I would like to see both city and state be more progressive. If a well functioning nation, the issues you raised would be most salient.

3. I talked very little about corruption in Chicago and Illinois and will fully admit I know far less about it than you do.

4. There is nothing in my initial argument that suggested that I didn't realize the above were true.

Now my approach throughout has been this: America is at such a level of dysfunction that in many ways, it doesn't even matter what are cities and states do. They are part of a terribly flawed system and they suffer greatly because of how our federal government fails to meet its responsibilities.

Now I raised endless points about why I think America is in big trouble (and no city or state can survive this trouble as long as they are part of the current sad state of the American union).

But one point IMHO carries such weight with me, is so visceral in what it says that it covers the multitude of sins that are related to it:

The top 400 families in the United States have the same wealth as the lower half of our population's economic ladder, some 150 million people.

Yes, Chet, I've said this as a mantra over and over (and over) again. Ad nassium. But mainly because you won't even address it. That's all I ask.

So, point blank, Chet:
given the inequality mentioned above, if it were to continue is there any hope for the United States as a whole, and as being part of the United States, its cities and states?

I will say edsg25 has a very critical point about the impact of globalization, but, I do have hope.

Because as places like China and India get industrialized, their workers also start to organize and demand fair compensation.

The number of places big business can go and just completely exploit labor is shrinking, as the world becomes better interconnected.

And Chicago, Illinois, and the USA, despite the income inequality, despite the corruption, still harbor brilliant innovators, hard workers, and an excellent infrastructure.

But to deny the toxic effect of rolling back anti-trade legislation is just friggin nuts. I'd like to see guys like Chet transported back in time to Dickensian-era London, before child labor laws, health care, social security, environmental regulation, etc. These people want all the gains that organized labor got for society through blood, sweat and tears. I have a bridge to sell anyone who thinks the Rockefellers of the world ever cared about the welfare of their workforce until they were forced to.

The premise, as presented, that the country is doomed becuase of some sinister concentration of wealth is ridiculous - the tech billionaires largely came from pretty ordinary backgrounds and other than the good works that the foundations they set up will largely not being using their fortunes to do anything other than make life more pleasant for more people. I don't hear too many stories of the horrors of the cube farms at Facebook chopping coders up and feeding them into the boilers to keep the servers spinning or other horrors. In fact the reality is that the GOVERNMENT ITSELF was largely responsible for the madness of the Oliver Twist sort of existence that do-gooders of another era wanted: “Please sir! I want some more!”: The Horror of Victorian-era Workhouses « "Not Yet Published"

The question then becomes not one of making futile efforts of flatten the stratification of society but in having a smarter population that is less easily deluded by the lies of politicians whose selfish behaviors ensure them places of ongoing privilege / power but of having an electorate that sends charlatans packing.

You can rail against the concentration of wealth and ignore the gross abuses of power, but doing so will result in further abusive behavior. To my way of thinking if the folks with concentrated wealth fund things like libraries, universities and museums that should help to improve the lives of those who visit these insititutions. My spiral is an upward one of greater knowledge. Efforts aimed specifically toward consificatory tax policies seems to end with no one having anything to aspire to...

If folks have evaded the laws as written then of course they should be punished, but to punish folks for merely successfully following a well designed business strategy is madness.

The tone that the OP takes, in suggesting the WHOLE WORLD is doomed by some concentration of wealth among some small group of Americans is utterly incommprehensible. How is that the Chinese are reaping rewards under their newly revitalize capitalist system? What of the growth rate of Latin America? Would you resort to some Castro or Chavez inspired madness?

Put the blame where it belongs: on failures of education / regressive social policies that cordoned off the poor and allow politicians to play games to isolate the underclass. These are endemic problems in Chicago that could be solved if the political leaders even allowed them to be acknowledged much as they mock the very laws that are putatively designed to ensure fair elections: http://goo.gl/KOF0l

Last edited by chet everett; 11-16-2011 at 02:51 PM..

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